Sin City Presents Magazine August 2016 Volume 3 Issue 8 - Page 40

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The Gibson Les Paul is a 1987 Custom and is also special to me. I have always believed that the best sounding Les Paul of all is the Standard; mahogany neck/body with the rosewood fingerboard. The Custom models have the ebony fingerboard, while looking great, that brittle/dense wood gives the Customs a brash sound that I never liked. So, I also had an idea to do custom mother of pearl star cluster inlays on the fretboard, and at that time, I had my luthier take off the ebony fingerboard and we put a rosewood board on it with my designed star inlays, stained it black, and voila, my Les Paul is now a Standard in disguise of a Custom. It is also loaded with vintage Bill Lawrence L-500’s.

1970’s Aerosmith was a huge inspiration to me. Joe Perry had a profound effect on my attitude and stylistic approach. My 10-string B.C. Rich Bich Supreme is actually my second Bich Supreme. The first was a nice 1980 from the factory, but after owning it for several years I saw areas that I could improve on, and I had a custom Bich Supreme built in 1998. Bernie Jr. and I chose the woods (extreme flame maple for the top 1/2” thick, and swamp ash for the neck and body… my ultimate wood combo for tone). I also decided to strip down the excessive amount of electronics that were characteristic of the original Bich models and have it set up for what I needed and actually used. The deep red finish is an homage to Joe’s Bich’s of the late 1970’s. It is a stunning guitar and sounds gorgeous.

My other B.C. Rich Bich is a rare transparent red acrylic model from 1999. It is really pretty to look at, but after several pickup swaps (Gibson, 2 x different Seymour Duncan’s, and Bill Lawrence attempted) to try to get it to sound good, I gave up (I left the Lawrence L-500’s in it, expensive pickups sitting in a non-used guitar haha), as acrylic is more dense than most woods which makes the guitar heavier then heck, and atonal to a fault. I was snuggling up with B.C. Rich back in those days, and Bernie Jr. got me this at artist pricing as he knew I was a proponent of his company. A good guitar for slide playing, and that’s about it, but it is sexy.